"There is something darkly comedic, and readily mockable, about the conspiracy theorist considered as a type..."

"... the lonerism, eager dot-connecting, and thinly-veiled death curiosity masked by a supposed quest for the truth."

Several great clips at the link, but let me single out the one from (one of my all-time favorite movies) "Slacker":

Is Scott Walker's "fixation" on Reagan "creepy"?

The Capital Times writer Paul Fanlund says so, as he identifies "3 Themes" in Scott Walker's just-published book "Unintimidated." The other 2 themes are "He throws even his allies under the bus" and "His egocentricity is just bizarre." This is the Cap Times, appealing its readership of Madison liberals who've been hating Walker for the last 3 years and have been hating Reagan even longer.

On the Reagan "fixation," there's Walker's annual Reagan birthday party (which is also the anniversary of his wedding to his wife Tonette). Here's how Walker describes the party in 2011, which was just before the big Wisconsin protests began.

[On] Saturday, February 12, Tonette and I hosted a dinner at the Executive Residence to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birthday. (I had been in Dallas to see the Packers win the Super Bowl on the sixth, his actual birthday, so we postponed the celebration by a week.) 

Meade and I were reading the book out loud together last night, and at that parenthetical, I said: "Oh, yeah, the protests blotted out all the great afterglow feeling we were having over winning the Super Bowl." That was sad!

Tonette and I host a dinner each year on Reagan’s birthday. We serve his favorite foods— macaroni and cheese casserole, and red, white, and blue Jelly Belly jelly beans— and have musicians perform patriotic songs and Irish music. 

Aw, come on. That's creepy?! That's incredibly sweet. Who gives a party and serves mac-and-cheese and jelly beans? It's beyond unpretentious, and it's just charming and nice. Why shouldn't Republicans celebrate Ronald Reagan, their modern-day icon? And I give Walker credit for putting the celebration on February 6th (or 12th) instead of March 30th (in the style of the Democrats, with their icon JFK (see Rule #8, here)).

It is a wonderful evening, and serves as a reminder for me each year to be hopeful and optimistic just like Ronald Reagan. It happens to be a dual celebration because President Reagan’s birthday is also our wedding anniversary. Tonette jokes that I never forget our wedding anniversary because it is Reagan’s birthday.

Well, isn't that a really low-key and generous way to make your anniversary something that's fun for other people you know? But for Fanlund, that's part of a creepiness profile.

Hey, Fanlund, ever consider whether you're creepy? Maybe Walker seems creepy to you because deep down you know the way you look at him is creepy.

"Prepare your Emmys haterade now, because nothing can kill an awards show's buzz faster than..."

"... a Don Cheadle self-congratulatory tribute to how well television covered the Kennedy assassination, followed by a Carrie Underwood tribute to the Beatles' performance on the Ed Sullivan Show having been fifty years ago (next year)."

"NICK BEEF."

"Yes, he admits again, he has a penchant for the morbid. But this does not mean that he bought the plot next to Oswald’s as a joke, or a piece of installation art, or anything of the kind. It’s personal. It’s about change. The fragility of life. Something."

"Obama said 'chill, you gonna get me impeached'/But you don't need this shit anyway/Chill with me on the beach."

Jay-Z in his "Open Letter" which is — according to the NYT — "lash[ing] out at members of Congress who have raised questions about the legality of his recent trip to Cuba with Beyoncé, his wife."

On Friday, Representatives Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart said in a letter to Adam Szubin, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, that the trip looked like a tourist visit. “Despite the clear prohibition against tourism in Cuba, numerous press reports described the couple’s trip as tourism, and the Castro regime touted it as such in its propaganda,” the letter said.

But the Treasury Department responded that site-seeing [sic] was allowed during the off-hours on an educational visit and Jay-Z and Beyoncé had fulfilled their educational obligations by meeting with the La Colmenita theater group and talking with students at the Superior Art Institute.

I'm reading these lyrics, and I don't think he's (just) lashing out at the critics in Congress.

Politicians never did shit for me
Except lie to me, distort history

Do the "politicians" include Obama? Reread that part I put in the post title. I think he's challenging Obama to drop the charade. Imagine Obama taking Jay-Z's advice, deciding he's not a politician and he doesn't need this shit, and he should just say and do everything he really wants, get himself impeached and move on to better things, AKA the beach.

Jay-Z calls himself "the Bob Dylan of rap music" and riffs on the "Idiot Wind" lyrics:

Idiot wind, the Bob Dylan of rap music
You're an idiot, baby, you should become a student
Oh, you gonna learn today
Where the fuck have you been
The world's under new management
The new role model, fuck this Zoolander shit

Here are the lyrics to Dylan's "Idiot Wind" if you want to compare them to Jay-Z's "Open Letter." They are so much more elaborate and interesting that it makes the phrase "the Bob Dylan of rap music" sound as though it were meant as an insult to rap music.

But more importantly: "fuck this Zoolander shit" is directed at Obama, isn't it? Is it mocking Obama as phonily posing, like the movie character the male model Derek Zoolander?

I've never watched that movie past the first half-hour or so, but now, I'm reading the plot summary, and I see "Zoolander" has a political assassination plot!

[T]he fashion industry has been behind several political assassinations, and the brainwashed models are soon killed after they have completed their task.... As Derek takes the runway, Mugatu's disc jockey starts playing "Relax", activating Derek's mental programming....  

So what's Jay-Z talking about? I don't like seeing even oblique references to assassination in statements about the President.

Also in the Jay-Z song: "Wanna give me jail time and a fine/Fine, let me commit a real crime...."  And: "You know whenever I'm threatened, I start shooting, bark/Catch a body, head to Houston." Bark? Does he really say "bark"? Does that mean "Barack"? At least he said "Houston" and not "Dallas."

Real or political theater?

About that Bulgarian gun-pointing, gun-jamming incident... I'm feeling truther-y. How about you?